Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Intravenous versus oral acetaminophen for pain and quality of recovery after ambulatory spine surgery: a randomized controlled trial.
As ambulatory spine surgery increases, efficient recovery and discharge become essential. Multimodal analgesia is superior to opioids alone. Acetaminophen is a central component of multimodal protocols and both intravenous and oral forms are used. While some advantages for intravenous acetaminophen have been touted, prospective studies with patient-centered outcomes are lacking in ambulatory spine surgery. A substantial cost difference exists. We hypothesized that intravenous acetaminophen would be associated with fewer opioids and better recovery. ⋯ Intravenous acetaminophen was not superior to the oral form in ambulatory spine surgery patients. This does not support routine use of the more expensive intravenous form to improve recovery and accelerate discharge.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Neurophysiological outcomes that sustained clinically significant improvements over 3 years of physiologic ECAP-controlled closed-loop spinal cord stimulation for the treatment of chronic pain.
A novel, spinal cord stimulation (SCS) system with a physiologic closed-loop (CL) feedback mechanism controlled by evoked compound action potentials (ECAPs) enables the optimization of physiologic neural dose and the accuracy of the stimulation, not possible with any other commercially available SCS systems. The report of objective spinal cord measurements is essential to increase the transparency and reproducibility of SCS therapy. Here, we report a cohort of the EVOKE double-blind randomized controlled trial treated with CL-SCS for 36 months to evaluate the ECAP dose and accuracy that sustained the durability of clinical improvements. ⋯ The results suggest that a physiological adherence to supra-ECAP threshold therapy that generates pain inhibition provided by ECAP-controlled CL-SCS leads to durable improvements in pain intensity with no evidence of loss of therapeutic effect through 36-month follow-up.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Mar 2024
Application of restorative neurostimulation for chronic mechanical low back pain in an older population with 2-year follow up.
Data on the Medicare-aged population show that older patients are major consumers of low back pain (LBP) interventions. An effective approach for patients with mechanical LBP that has been refractory to conservative management is restorative neurostimulation. The efficacy of restorative neurostimulation has been demonstrated in multiple prospective studies, with published follow-up over 4 years, showing a consistent durable effect. ⋯ This aggregate analysis of three independent studies provides insight into the performance of restorative neurostimulation in an older population. Patients derived significant and clinically meaningful benefit in disability, pain and HRQoL. When compared with a similarly indicated cohort of younger patients, there were no statistically or clinically significant differences.